Remember

• Themes explored in 'Remember'

  • Love at one's final moments of life, conveying the notion that love is eternal
  • The significance of Memory, conveying the notions that memory is all that's left beloved
  • The inevitability of death
  • The eradication of grief thus euphemising death
  • Death as an anodyne- a release from pain and hardship in life
• Relationship between two lovers


  One faces their impending death, urging a loved one not to waste too much time grieving for her when she dies
• The title 'Remember' is ironic as she wants him to move on and forget about her
• The poem is about a great type of love beyond the physical
• Memento mori

  Remember you will die
• She was preempting her death - low life expectancy
• Wrote poem at age 19
• Released months before breaking off her first engagement to James Colinson

  Rossetti illuminates her departure from her engagement
• Broke off due to religious obligation as he was Roman Catholic


  Sacrifice for the sake of religion
• Lord Alfred Tennyson: '"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"'
• AO2:

  • Form: PETRARCHAN SONNET - associated with love poems, named after Petrarch, a 16th century Italian poet.
  • Divided into an octave (8 lines) and a senset (6 lines) 
  • Authoritative and passionate poetic voice
  • Metre: Iambic pentameter
  • Rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA CDD ECE - This movement from the balanced ABBA pattern to the more complicated variation between C, D, and E rhymes in the second part mirrors the poem's thought. 
• Admiration and fascination with death

  Due to its mystery and religious importance
• The fact the passion is expressed by a woman is startling for its time
• “Gone away / gone far away”

  • Anadiplosis emphasises the distance and disconnect of death.
  • the physical boundary within life and death. / Calvinist belief in the predestines / Habakkuk 2:20 “But the LORD is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him!" - the land of God / fear + isolation in death / soul sleep / preposition - transition
• “Gone far away into the silent land”

  • Emphasises the way that death prevents communication; only through memory and thought 
  • The land of the dead is also a place of "darkness and corruption": there doesn't seem to be much thought of a happy afterlife here. Memory is so important to this speaker because the "silent land" will keep her and her beloved completely apart.
  • Certainty of death. Liminal state - Tractarian message. Biblical allusion - going to the Land of God. Although we love God we also fear him. Habakkuk 2:20 “let all life be silent before him.”
• “When you can no longer hold me by the hand”

  • Enjambment - running stream of consciousness + free flow of emotions / ‘hand’ - connotations of marriage and love + used in her brother’s poetry to depict the first relations between a man and woman/ idea of being guided + vulnerability + freedom through death / alliterative ‘h’ sounds - panting - desperation
• “It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while”

  • Volta- symbolic of the boundary between life and death. Shift in rhyme scheme reflective of earthly love vs heavenly love.
• “You tell me of the future that you planned”

  • Reminiscent of the patriarchy in Victorian society. Exhaustion from instructional patriarchal relationships. Rejection of Catholicism following her breakup - strict Tractarianism beliefs. She loved him, but valued God more.
  • juxtaposition of pronouns - conflict of interests- rossetti turned down two proposals due to her religious convictions - patriarchal domination - frustration
• “Do not grieve:”

  • Radicalism by subverting Victorian mourning culture.
  • imperative / monosyllabic second clause / rejection of Victorian mourning culture / rhyming couplets - the pain of death for both parties.
• “Only remember me;you understand”

  • Caesura separates ‘me’ and ‘you’
  • End-stopped line - abrupt line endings
  • Repetition of “remember” and “you”
• ‘Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. ‘

  • juxtaposition - the complexity of the human experience. / full stop - rejection of human desire for a continuation of the earthly experience. 
• ‘It will be late to counsel then or pray. ‘

  • John Newman’s ideas regarding the validity of prayers for the dead - projection of high Anglican beliefs / definitive - permanence of death / structured  rhyme scheme - repression of emotions + factual  
• ‘Better by far you should forget and smile ‘ -  juxtaposition - her own conflicting ideals / alliteration - emphasises her unchanging wish for her lover’s joy. / unpredictable rhyme scheme - nature of death.  

  
  

  ‘Than that you should remember and be sad.’ -  Antithesis / refrain - the absence of ‘me’ - the loss of the individual via death - Galatians 3:23  ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female ; for ye are all one in Jesus Christ.’
• Summary

  Projecting an internal struggle between the desire for a physical existence and a spiritual one
• Structure

  • Petrarchan sonnet (popular within renaissance) in iambic pentameter
  • Rhyme scheme changes - Volta - romantic love ABBA ABBA CDD ECE
  • Rhyme scheme
• Language

  • Low diction
  • Juxtaposition with the complex structure to convey the childlike fear innate to all man
• Response of Victorian mourning culture

  • Still rejects the lavish nature of Victorian mourning culture
  • Simultaneously endorses the idea of grief as a human response and as a means to recover
  • Endowment of the delicate nature of Victorian culture through the use of euphemisms unlike that of 'song'
• Soul sleep - a rejection of the catholic idea of purgatory and john newman's ideals regarding the influence of prayer in the afterlife